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by sheafrotherdon



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Comfort, Episode Tag, Episode: s03e12 Lunar Ellipse, Other, Pack Feels, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-24 06:30:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/936516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one's around when Derek gets back into town.</p>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

> with thanks to dogeared for beta!

There's no one around when Derek gets back into town. The loft is empty, dust voids the only evidence that Cora had stacked her books beside the couch and on the coffee table, vacant drawers lying open, bare where once there'd been sweaters and jeans. Silence settles around him, and he breathes in the solitude; breathes out and shrugs out of his jacket, leaves it on the stairs beside his beat-up bag.

Stiles would probably call it nesting – the thought makes Derek huff as he swipes at the counters with a dishrag, as he snaps clean sheets over his bed. He'll call them all later, let them know he's back in town, but for now the familiarity of being alone feels good against his skin, like he's slipped back into place, a cog to push against a well-worn wheel.

_Were you lonely?_

_Maybe._

He sits, in time, at the foot of his bed, looks out through the windows, lets the ache in his chest bloom and spread. This is better, he tells himself. Peter's trouble; Cora's safe. He closes his eyes and lets his senses reach into the cobwebbed corners of the loft, chasing memories with his hearing, with his sense of smell. Better, he says to himself. Not good, but perhaps the best he can hope for. And it's easy, to sit quiet and still, to listen to the rumble of cars on the highway, the call of trains, and the thud thud of heartbeats –

Many. Several. Five.

Derek opens his eyes, crosses the room, pulls roughly at the door.

"Yo!" says Stiles, beaming at him from beneath a ridiculous knitted cap in the shape of a monkey. "Saw your car earlier, figured you'd be here moping your sadwolf mopes without any food in the fridge." He pushes past, carrying some kind of covered dish.

"Hi," says Scott, who has the decency to look abashed. "He was pretty insistent."

"I know how that goes," Derek manages. 

In troop Allison, Lydia, Isaac, chattering animatedly, carrying bowls and plates and three bags of Doritos. Derek stands stock still, the loft door still open, watching as they rummage for plates in his kitchen, as they lift the lid on dishes of mac and cheese and meatballs and sauce, lay out cookies, stash beer in his fridge.

"Do I want to know how you got beer?" he asks at last.

"Don't be a fussywolf," Stiles replies. "C'mere, I made meatballs, you don't want meatballs?" He picks one up with his fingers and eats it, gasping when it turns out to still be too hot, gesturing wildly for something, which ends up being water.

"Miss us?" asks Allison, and she smiles with enough familiar mischief that Derek closes the door at last, resigns himself to the fact that they're staying.

"I wasn't gone long."

"Three weeks," says Isaac.

"22 days, actually," Stiles offers. 

Scott rolls his eyes. "You could've said where you were going."

"I could have," Derek agrees, opening the fridge and pulling out a beer, twisting off the cap with his hand. 

"So, where did you go?" asks Lydia.

Derek takes a long pull at his beer before he answers. "Away."

Isaac crows and accepts a high five from Allison, while Scott and Stiles rummage in their pockets and hand over several five dollar bills.

"They bet," Lydia informs him cheerfully. "On what you'd say. Scott went with silence, Stiles went with – " She turns toward him. "What was it?"

"Antigua," Stiles says.

Derek stares at him.

"What? Who wouldn't want a vacation after all of – " He gestures wildly. "That?"

"Food's getting cold," Scott offers, scraping seven layer dip onto his plate and grabbing a fistful of chips. 

There's the gentle hubbub of conversation as five of them dish up dinner, elbowing each other for spoons and forks, settling on the bar stools at the counter. Derek watches them, catalogs the mannerisms he could pick out at fifty feet – the tilt of Lydia's head; Allison's precise, measured movements; the shake of Scott's shoulders as he laughs; the depth of Isaac's reach; Stiles' bouncing knee. He drinks his beer and stands to the side, comfortable just outside of their circle.

"You're not eating?" Isaac asks around a mouthful of garlic bread.

"Gross," Lydia mutters.

"Oh, he's eating," says Stiles, and gets off his stool, grabs Derek's elbow, and tugs bodily to make him move. It's cute. Derek doesn't move an inch. "C'mon, you think we hauled this stuff over here for our own benefit? It's for you, you dumbass. Sit down." He points at his own stool and Derek holds his gaze for a moment, just long enough for things to be awkward, then moves to sit with the others. He blinks when Stiles claps him on the shoulder and squeezes. "That's it. Eat up, big guy." And Stiles is off, wandering around the counter, stealing mouthfuls from everyone's plate, threatening to sit in Scott's lap, making Lydia laugh, making Allison pick up her food and hold it away from his grabby little hands.

Derek eats. It's good. The mac and cheese didn't come out of a box, and the meatballs taste better than anything he came across on his trip. He eats a cookie, then another, and when he stands up to start collecting dishes, Scott presses him back down, takes the plate right out of Derek's hands and without missing a beat of conversation, passes it to Lydia, who passes it to Isaac, who's running hot water in the sink and is up to his elbows in suds.

It's strange, the normalcy of it all, and something sits uneasily in Derek's chest. He casts around for words to describe it, comes up blank until the notion of comfort sneaks in. The idea makes him flush, and he scratches the back of his neck in confusion, reaches for his beer and finds it empty, moves to pull another from the fridge. Scott elbows him as he puts a dish away, says sorry with an infectious grin on his face, and Derek finds himself smiling back. 

"Shoo," says Allison. "We got this."

Derek nods, ambles over to the couch and sits on the floor, back against the weathered blue upholstery. He listens to the clatter of plates, the hum of voices, and turns the idea of comfort over and over his mind. He feels restless and stupid and a little desperate for more of it, shifts – maybe squirms – and tries to concentrate on something else, anything else, than the warmth he feels toward this ragtag bunch of misfit toys.

Stiles flops down on the couch, leg pressed up against Derek's side, fingers finding their way into Derek's hair. "Someone's wound up," he says, scritching Derek's scalp, and Derek can't help it, he closes his eyes, lets out a breath, and sags. "Better," Stiles says quietly, and just keeps scritching, and someday Derek's going to have to work out why he lets Stiles do this stuff, break his boundaries without a second thought.

"TV?" asks Scott as the din in the kitchen stutters then quiets. "Cards?"

"Board games," says Allison.

"You think I have board games?" Derek mumbles incredulously, opening his eyes. 

"We brought our own," Lydia offers, rummaging in her bag. "Trivial Pursuit."

"Zombie Snakes and Ladders," says Isaac, putting the board and pieces on the coffee table.

"I'm still going with cards," says Scott.

Derek tunes them out as they bicker, focusing instead on the drag of Stiles' fingernails at the back of his neck. "You should play," he says, and the words take effort.

"Nah," says Stiles. "I'm used to spectating. Perfected that art on the lacrosse team. Still," he adds, "I'm hoping for a couple, three, maybe four fewer balls thrown wild in my direction. Maybe an errant plastic zombie, that's where I draw the line."

Derek huffs a breath of laughter.

"I like hearing you laugh," says Stiles. He stills his hand. "I like having you back."

Derek can't quite find the right way to say he's glad to be back, too, that he's grateful for the company and the meatballs and the beer, grateful for Stiles sitting right beside him – it's too hard to fit that jigsaw piece amid the others he's used to snapping together, so he doesn't try, just leans his face against Stiles' knee and closes his eyes.

"You're a cheat!" Scott says. "You counted that space twice, you don't get to try for yellow pie." 

"Sweetie," says Lydia. "I'm not the one here with a problem in math."

"Burn," whispers Allison, while Isaac just laughs.

"Shhhh, he's sleeping," Stiles says somewhere above Derek's head.

Derek's not, not yet, but he's headed that way, buoyed along by chatter and warmth, a full stomach, Stiles' jeans rough beneath his cheek.

"Think it worked?" asks Scott.

"He seems pretty content," Allison offers.

"I'm glad we did this for him," says Isaac.

"Me too," says Stiles before Derek slips under. "I'm glad we did this too."


End file.
